Sources: Zuckerberg told Facebook staff the ad boycott is more of a “reputational and a partner issue” than an economic one, expects advertisers to return soon  —  Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees he was reluctant to bow to the threats of a growing ad boycott …

Rep. David Cicilline says Tim Cook will testify in front of the House Judiciary Committee in late July, alongside Facebook, Amazon, and Google CEOs  —  Apple CEO Tim Cook, the last chief executive of four big tech companies targeted in a U.S. House Judiciary Committee antitrust probe …

WhatsApp announces contact-adding QR codes, animated stickers, dark mode for desktop and web, and a new group calling button  —  Improvements to video calls are also on the way  —  WhatsApp has announced a collection of new features that are coming to the Facebook-owned messaging service in the coming weeks.

As part of UK antitrust investigation of Google, the CMA says Safari's use of Google as its default search engine is “a significant barrier to entry” for rivals  —  (Reuters) - The payments by Alphabet Inc's Google to Apple Inc to be the default search engine on Apple's Safari web browser create …

Apple says it will close 30 more US retail stores as COVID-19 cases spike, bringing the total re-closed stores in the US to 77 in recent weeks  —  - Apple will close 30 additional stores in the United States by Thursday.  — Apple has already reclosed 47 stores in recent weeks …

MIT apologizes and takes down its 80M-strong AI image training dataset, scraped from Google Images, that labeled some images with racist and misogynistic terms  —  Top uni takes action after El Reg highlights concerns by academics  —  Special report MIT has taken offline its highly cited dataset …

Google says it has discontinued the Pixel 3a and 3a XL, with remaining stock only available through 3rd parties; Google has yet to announce a rumored successor  —  In a statement provided to Android Police, Google has confirmed that its Pixel 3a and 3a XL smartphones are now discontinued.

VMware to acquire Datrium, which provides disaster recovery services for hybrid cloud environments, for an undisclosed sum; Datrium had previously raised $170M  —  The deal for the hyper-converged infrastructure startup looks to advance VMware's hybrid cloud standing with a cost-optimized solution for backing up data in the cloud.

Dish has completed its acquisition of Boost Mobile from T-Mobile in a deal worth $1.4B  —  There's a new logo, too  —  Dish now owns Boost Mobile, bringing Dish — after years of speculation — into the consumer wireless market where it can start to compete with Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile.

Sources: Apple faces up to 1-2 month production delays for 5G iPhone lineup, lowers volume target to 80M units, is trying to avoid postponing launch until 2021  —  US tech titan to make more older handsets to offset coronavirus disruption  —  TAIPEI/PALO ALTO, U.S. …

Vendia, founded by two former AWS executives and aiming to build a multi-cloud serverless platform, raises $5.1M seed led by Neotribe's Swaroop Kolluri  —  When the inventor of AWS Lambda, Tim Wagner, and the former head of blockchain at AWS, Shruthi Rao, co-found a startup, it's probably worth paying attention.

Anduril Industries, founded by Palantir veterans and Palmer Luckey, raises $200M led by a16z at a $1.9B valuation for its AI-powered drone and surveillance tech  —  Anduril Industries Inc., a Southern California startup that builds technology for military agencies and border surveillance …

Researchers say China's mobile hacking campaign against the Uighurs was broader and more aggressive than previously known, beginning as far back as 2013  —  A new report revealed a broad campaign that targeted Muslims in China and their diaspora in other countries, beginning as early as 2013.

Over 15 journalists describe covering Facebook, which they say lies on the record, has ghost-written op-eds, and has demanded quote approval for interviews  —  One day in July 2016, Casey Newton, a tech reporter for The Verge, sat down at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park for the biggest interview of his career.

Report: Twitch topped 5B hours watched in Q2, up 62.7% QoQ, YouTube Gaming hit 1.5B hours, up 39.6%, and Facebook Gaming reached 822M hours watched, up 48.5%  —  Twitch had already broken viewership records in the first quarter of 2020 amid coronavirus lockdowns, surpassing 3 billion total hours watched …

Employees at tech companies say NDAs, widely used across the industry, are muzzling those who have endured racism and discrimination  —  Earlier this month, Pariss Athena appeared on a podcast to discuss her experiences as a Black woman in web development.  During the wide-ranging conversation …

Twitter removed a picture from a Trump tweet after receiving a DMCA complaint from the NYT, which owns the rights to the photo taken in 2015  —  Twitter has removed a picture from a tweet by President Trump on Tuesday after it received a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) …

Zoom has missed its self-imposed June 30 deadline to disclose government data requests, pushing it back to “later this year”  —  How many government demands for user data has Zoom received?  We won't know until “later this year,” an updated Zoom blog post now says.

Curv, which is building secure crypto custody management tools, raises $23M Series A from CommerzVentures, Coinbase Ventures, and others  —  Curv, a company that provides increased secrecy when it comes to holding crypto assets, has closed a $23 million Series A funding round.